Victor Ponta: Early elections surefire, two-round mayoral elections won't make the cut

Chairman of Pro Romania Victor Ponta told a news conference in Resita on Friday that early parliamentary elections will take place, but the two-round mayoral ballot won't make the cut, because the National Liberal Party (PNL) doesn't want this.

"I am sure that early elections will be called, because I am sure that the legal pension rise won't be enforced beginning September 1, just as they won't earmark the money for increased child allowances, they won't raise the teachers' wages, and will instead readjust taxes to be able to close the budget. I examined the budget very carefully together with other colleagues who know how to build budgets; the way it looks now, this budget can only cover six or seven months, this is why it was passed by the government's engaging responsibility. Therefore, they need elections to be held in this time span. If elections catch them after this bubble with the budget bursts, and after they struggle with the problem of pensions-wages-allowances, they are bound to take a beating in elections and they will be like the Ciolos Government. The Ciolos Government still enjoyed popularity in May - June, but they kept elections in December and you saw what happened," Ponta said.

On the other hand, the Pro Romania leader believes that PNL doesn't want mayors' elections to be organized in two rounds, but that the liberals resorted to engaging responsibility for this bill for the Social Democratic Party to file a censure motion which, if it passes, will pave the way for the early election procedure.

Ponta argues that the Social Democratic Party and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania don't have enough votes to get the censor motion adopted, so that the liberals will end up voting against their own government, as it happened with the PSD in 2017, "which means they are turning themselves into a complete laughing stock."

The Pro Romania leader also said that if the motion is not voted on, the PSD will challenge the law on the two-round mayoral election in the Constitutional Court, based on the Court's ruling of 2012 according to which the electoral law cannot be modified six months before elections.